Developing collaborative enquiries

I’ve blogged before about Civic Futures and my intentions for participating in it and onboarding on it. We’ve been able to take part in thought-provoking sessions from a range of different organisations.

1. Mapping challenges we could tackle across the cohort

This led us as a Civic Futures cohort to identify a range of themes:

• What would it look like if every Londoner had the permission and resources to recover? To really recover? And to recover together?
• How can we help communities to access the space they need to thrive and grow? What does community scaffolding look like?
• How can we support each other within and outside this space, whilst on the civic futures journey?
• How do we ensure that in our focus on recovery we maintain some of the positive things we have learned through the pandemic?
• How do we engage the community if they are tired, feel it’s pointless etc?
• How can we identify and convene the collective energy for change across our borough (council and CVS) to grow and spread that energy?
• Can we work on a ‘ people‘s manifesto for London ‘?

These were then narrowed down to:

1. What would it look like if every Londoner had the permission and
   resources to recover? To really recover? And to recover together?
2. How can we help communities to access the space they need to thrive and grow?
3. How do we engage the community if they are tired and feel it’s pointless?

To inspire the work, one of the fellows shared a poem by Adrienne Maree Brown which you can read here:

a spell to cast upon meeting a stranger, comrade or friend working for social and/or environmental justice and liberation:

you are a miracle walking
i greet you with wonder
in a world which seeks to own
your joy and your imagination
you have chosen to be free,
every day, as a practice.
i can never know
the struggles you went through to get here,
but i know you have swum upstream
and at times it has been lonely

i want you to know
i honor the choices you made in solitude
and i honor the work you have done to belong
i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself
and your journey
to love the particular container of life
that is you

you are enough
your work is enough
you are needed
your work is sacred
you are here
and i am grateful

Next post on developing a rich picture of the recovery in London as you see it